Mousou cursed, low and vicious. "Men! This ghost is an imposter trying to sow deceit! Arrest him!"
Toki lunged to her feet, interrupting him. "Is this true, Mousou?! Did you assassinate my father, so that you could become the regent of this country? You, of all people, have gained the most from his death!"
"You trust the words of a ghost?" Mousou protested. "They are nothing more than filthy lies!"
"Strike! And see the truth!" Naruto commanded, throwing the Cursed Warrior's halberd to Toki.
She caught it easily, spinning it in her hand and lunging at Mousou. It was well done, and skilful, but as slow as a civilian. "Guards! To me!"
Mousou blocked it, with his bare hand. "Now, Sagi. This is not the time to be over reacting."
Then, the small stun tag on the metal tip of the halberd went off. I'd given Naruto a bundle of them, earlier, but the placement of it had been his own choice. And it was a good one – the electric shock might not have hurt Mousou all that much, but it shattered the fragile chakra shell of his transformation, leaving behind a very different person.
Mousou – no. Hoki. I recognised him as the leader of the Watari Clan, from Sai's bingo book – cursed.
He ripped the polearm out of Toki's hands, lunging forward faster than the eye could follow.
Then froze.
"Shadow Possession Complete," I said, still kneeling where I had been sitting all along. Toki had dragged my shadow with her as she lunged, and from there it had been easy to snare him.
The guards hovered, nervously torn between orders. The complete change of Mousou's person probably wasn't helping them.
The ninja, on the other hand, leapt into action. Naruto created a score of clones to occupy them, and Sai's ink beasts burst into the scene to help subdue them. I raced my shadow out, helping to hold who I could, and hoping that no one was going to try suicide bombing again.
"Who are you?" Toki demanded, staring. "You aren't Mousou at all!"
"I am Hoki," he said, lips twisting. Clearly he understood that there was no way back from this. "The leader of the Watari Clan. Mousou was just the lie that your father fell for!"
"Right from the start…" Toki said, eyes going wide. "You've been plotting to take over since the moment you arrived here."
"How dare you judge us, you spoilt feudal brat!" Hoki spat. "Fortune has always favoured you. You know nothing about our lives. We suffer in ways you could never understand."
"So?" Naruto demanded, ditching the transformation with a puff of chakra smoke. "You had it tough, big deal. So do lots of people. That doesn't make it okay for you to come here and kill people!"
"And what would a village brat like you know?" Hoki said scornfully. "Pampered ninja from a wealthy village couldn't begin to understand. Those that have homes and families and the support of clans… how can you compare to our wandering, vagrant lifestyle?"
Of the ninja on our team, the only one that fit those criteria was me. There were shadows in Naruto's eyes at the accusation.
"All we wanted was a place to call our own," Hoki said, voice turning syrupy and cajoling. "There's nothing wrong with that, surely?"
"So find someplace else," Naruto said bluntly, completely unimpressed with the attempt to sway him. "Don't try and take someone else's home. That's not right! You could have found somewhere new! You could have asked!"
"You speak as if we never tried that!" Hoki shouted. "As if we didn't build from scratch only to have the ninja villages destroy it from under us! As if your precious Hidden Leaf hasn't hounded us for years. This way we have the power to fight back! We would be in control. We would never be forced out to wander again!"
I wondered if the accusation had truth to it. Konoha did not have a history free from morally reprehensible actions. And that was without even considering what happened in the shadows.
Toki slapped him. I winced as my head was rocked to the side, the force carried through my jutsu. "That doesn't give you the right," she hissed. "You killed them!"
He sneered back, blood dripping from his lip. "That's what ninja do. Ask your little friends. How many of my men have they killed in the last two days alone? You think they're any better than us?"
Five. The answer is five, I didn't say. Did he think I didn't know that?
"They attacked us first!" Naruto retorted. "If they hadn't done that then they wouldn't have been hurt. You can't blame us for your actions." He crossed his arms. "Stop trying to make everyone else feel bad. It doesn't make what you did any less wrong."
"Hurry it up," I suggested tightly, feeling the strain developing on my jutsu. There was a limit to how long I could hold it for. Generally speaking, we didn't have conversations like this.
Toki drew back and took a ragged breath. "Hoki, formerly known as Mousou!" She declared, half to him and half to the slightly confused audience. "I pronounce you a traitor to the crown. I have found you responsible for the assassination of Owashi, Daimyo of the Land of Birds. And," she reached up to remove her hat, and let her hair spill down her back. "Of Sagi, Daimyo of the Land of Birds! Twice over you have killed our lord! I, Toki, sentence you to death!"
There were a number of startled exclamations from the crowd.
"Toki," Naruto said. It wasn't quite a protest, more of a reminder, but I thought he didn't exactly approve of that last bit. Killing people in battle was different, in a way. You didn't have time to consider it. It wasn't so deliberate. As if that made it better.
Toki grabbed a sword from one of the guards.
We could have stopped her. Of course we could have. All I would have needed to do would be to let go.
And what then? Would Hoki go quietly? I didn't think so. And keeping ninja imprisoned took a lot of skill and caution. It would almost inevitably fail. A second attack wouldn't be so subtle – and we wouldn't be here to stop it. We could try take him back to Konoha, try to transport him and however many other ninja were here by ourselves. And really. Would that be any better future for them?
So we could have stopped her. But we didn't.
"Hoki-sama," one of the Watari-nin gasped, sounding stricken. "You'll pay for that."
"Enough!" Naruto shouted. His hands were clenched into fists at his side. "Enough fighting! It isn't fixing anything! Revenge just goes around and around and everyone ends up dead! Why can't you try talking to each other?!"
There was chakra gusting out from him, kicking up wind, like it would have in the middle of a fight. Still blue, still only Naruto, but a sign he was really upset all the same.
Toki was breathing heavily, gaze upon the corpse. The sword in her hand was limp, dragging on the ground.
The tableau was frozen. The silence stretched out.
"He is dead," Toki said, wearily. "Owashi. Sagi. You can rest in peace now." She turned, slowly, to take in the sight of everyone else.
"The dead have their justice," I said, quietly. "What about the living? You're the Daimyo now, Toki. You need to make a decision."
Maybe I wasn't quiet enough. A cry of 'Toki-sama!' went up from the crowd, and people started collapsing to their knees. They were bowing to her, crowning her with the power she'd only held in her brother's name before.
Her eyes were wide. She swallowed, harshly, then stepped forward. "The dead have their justice!" she repeated, voice carrying clearly. "No more will Cursed Warriors haunt our lands – their time has passed! We must look to the future now; move forward with the hands of the clock." She turned towards the prisoners held captive in our grips. "For you who followed Hoki, the ninja of the Watari Clan, I tell you this. Your leader has died. And like a true warrior, with him die his crimes."
She stood straighter, looking calm and resolute. "If you are as you claim, and wish only to have a place to call home, then I give you a choice. Stay. Make this land your home and love it as we do. If you do not wish to stay here then leave and do not return."
"And don't even think about attacking," I added, as severely as I could. My shadow jutsu broke, and I unfolded my hands. They were stiff from being held in one seal for so long. I was glad that none of them had been fighting to break my hold at the end, it probably would have worked.
One ninja faltered, then knelt. And one by one the others began to make their choices. Some knelt. Some turned and fled. None were foolish enough to try their luck.
Cynically, I didn't think that it would last forever. Toki had – maybe – avoided making an enemy of the entire clan by accepting them, but she was almost certainly keeping enemies close.
"Toki-sama," a more familiar voice said, breaking from the crowd to also kneel near the front of the stage. "Forgive me," Chishima entreated.
"You could not have known of his betrayal," she said. "We were all fooled."
"Not only for that," Chishima explained. "Forgive me for not seeing how much pain you were in. For not noticing that you were not Sagi, all along. I should have seen it."
I felt a little like we were witnessing something private, but he had brought this up here and now. Everyone was witnessing it.
"I didn't wish for you to see it," Toki said finally. "You are forgiven. And I am sorry that as you learn it is I who stands here, you must realise that Sagi is long dead."
He bowed.
She turned away. "Bring me Komei. We have much to discuss about the future of this country."
Sai arrived quietly bringing Komei from wherever he had been evacuated to avoid the fighting.
"Why didn't you stop her?" Naruto hissed at me, as we followed Toki towards a meeting room.
It sounded like an accusation. I hated it. It immediately put me on the defensive and I hated that too.
"Why didn't you?" I hissed back, like an attack. "It was the best thing to do."
Naruto looked actually surprised. "How can you say that? I didn't think you'd think like that."
"Why not," I responded. "He was the enemy. He tried to kill us. He wouldn't have just gone away."
"You let Gaara go," Naruto said. "And Temujin. And that was the same."
"No it wasn't," I said. "It's not even remotely the same." It was different, with Gaara, because I had known. Temujin had been Gaara's choice. I wasn't sure it had been the right one, but I could justify it.
I huffed, impatiently. "Gaara and Temujin were totally beaten. We had the upper hand, do you understand? Even if they came back and attacked again, we would have won again. Konoha was too strong for the invasion; Temujin's soldiers couldn't stand up to ninja. But Land of Birds doesn't have that strength. You think he wouldn't have waited until we left and then killed Toki afterwards?"
"It's still not right," Naruto said. He looked troubled.
"Then find a better answer," I snapped. "Because I don't know what it is."
I tried to reign in my temper, because I didn't want to be mad at Naruto. Not when he was right. Maybe I was mad because he was right, and that meant we had been wrong. And I didn't like that.
.
.
We kept taking watch with Toki. I'd rather insisted on it, even though she and Komei had spent the entire day hammering out what to do with the remaining Watari-nin – and what to do if the rest attacked.
I'd even volunteered for first watch. We'd switched to shifts rather than full nights, and there was a tiny Naruto spider snoozing somewhere in the end of my braid. I tried not to fidget and squish it, though I really wanted to.
"They want to have a crowning ceremony tomorrow," Toki said, sighing. "Apparently, having been Sagi doesn't count."
"It might help ease the confusion," I suggested. "The situation is complicated."
"I know." She held up the pocket watch so that I could see it. "When they called me the Daimyo… I heard it tick." There were tears welling in her eyes. "From Daimyo to Daimyo. Time moves on."
What kind of jutsu does that? I wanted to know but that wasn't the important question to ask.
"It does," I agreed. "Do you know what you're going to do now?"
"I had no plans," she admitted. "I thought that I would join my ghosts. But there is so much to be done here. If someone kills me, then someone else will try and gain revenge for it. It will be a never ending circle."
I nodded. In that way, killing Hoki probably hadn't helped. "It's a hard one to break. You know, you're going to need someone to guard you, right? For a long time; until you can be certain of their loyalty. They might mean it when they say this is their home now, but it only takes one."
"You won't stay, will you?" She asked, already seeming to know the answer. "The three of you."
I quirked a smile, and risked drawing my knees to my chest. "To tell you the truth, we're not really trained for this. We're making it up as we go along."
Toki laughed, and it sounded real. "The secret is… so am I."
.
.
Naruto sent a toad to Konoha in the morning. Apparently Jiraiya had a system where they could get there pretty fast, so Toki's mission could be accepted with ninja dispatched in a day's time.
But before that, we still got to sit through the second Daimyo's coronation that we'd been invited to. That we'd been the cause of. There was probably something wrong with that.
I'd even been gifted with a formal kimono that had apparently belonged to Toki when she was younger, mostly because I'd made a vague comment about finding a place to buy replacement shoes, and that had apparently led to a whole new outfit. Or something.
Granted, it was better than being dirty and dishevelled at a very formal event, but I was a little afraid of moving in fear that I would wrinkle it.
During the ceremony, the Watari Clan made their formal statement of commitment towards the Daimyo. There were more of them than there had been before – apparently not all of them had been involved after all – including women and children. There was a woman with a particular shade of blue hair that caught my eye.
"Sorry," I said to Naruto after the ceremony. "There's someone I have to speak to."
I didn't want to. And it wouldn't fix anything. But I had to do it all the same.
I approached her awkwardly, and not only because of the kimono. "I'm Shikako Nara," I said quietly, folding myself into seiza across from her. "One of the Konoha ninja."
"Hokuto," she said in turn, eyes guarded. "Of the Watari."
"Hokushin." I faltered. "Was he your…" In some ways, I didn't want to know the answer to that. Easier, if he was just an enemy. If he didn't leave anyone behind. But the world didn't work like that.
She was silent. "He was my brother."
I reached into the neck of the kimono and withdrew two scrolls. It hadn't felt right, leaving them behind with my gear.
"I'm sorry," I murmured, setting them respectfully on the ground. I didn't make any excuses. Either she would understand, or she wouldn't, and nothing I would say could change that.
She reached out and picked them up. Her hands were trembling. "Leave," she said.
I left.
We stayed vigilant, but two days later when Raido Namiashi arrived we were able to report that there were no further incidences. I wasn't sure whether he seemed very impressed or very unimpressed, but it did seem like we were leaving Toki in capable hands, either way.
We said our goodbyes, and started a quiet and subdued journey home. It wasn't that our mission had ended badly. But it hadn't been quite so clean cut, either.
"Did you want to take first watch?" I offered to Sai, after he checked our perimeter for the third time.
He came back and sat down. "No," he said. "There is something I want to tell you."